PANTEGO — Terra Ceia will have gone almost a month without a game once the season resumes on Jan. 5. The Christmas vacation will make it tough for the girls to stay in game shape, but the layoff comes with its own set of perks, too.

The time off has allowed coach Daren Hubers and his Lady Knights to look back at what did and didn’t work in the first half of their season. With so much time for practice, one of their focuses has been adding a new wrinkle to their defense.

“We’re trying to work on a little bit different defense so we’ve got another defense in our arsenal to mix it up during games,” Hubers said. “We’re just trying to get the girls back in shape, too. We didn’t practice at all last week (around Christmas).”

Terra Ceia’s most used defensive strategies have been 1-2-2 and 1-3-1 formations. It’s not that those strategies haven’t been working out for the Lady Knights. It’s more so that their conference opponents are familiar with what they do and Hubers wanted to better defend their sharpshooting foes in the conference.

He envisions their 2-3 zone to be something akin to the one that has proven successful for Jim Boeheim.

“We’re trying to get more of a Syracuse-style defense here where we’re trapping on the wings,” Hubers said. “We’ve been doing the other two (defenses) for so long that the other teams in our conference know exactly what’s coming.

“We’re trying to mix it up and put more pressure on the wings. We’re coming up against some good outside shooting teams here in the next few weeks, so we want to put some more pressure on the wings, trap them and disrupt what they’re trying to do.”

What makes Boeheim’s zone so effective for Syracuse is its ability to adjust to the opponent’s fortes. It will take some time in practice and pre-game preparations for Terra Ceia to get to that level, but once it does, it will be hard to overcome.

The Lady Knights won’t be changing much on the offensive side. Rather, they have identified their strengths and will continue to build on them.

They had a tremendous post presence last season. They were able to earn the majority of their points in the paint, which is something they haven’t been able to do this year. Hubers has noticed some players’ ability to knock down perimeter shots, so he plans on orienting the offense more toward that.

“Ashley James is shooting the three ball really good right now,” he said. “We want to try and utilize that a little more this second half of the season. We’re hoping to continue with some of the things we saw that were looking good in the first part of the season and that we can improve on.”

Whether Terra Ceia is up against man-to-man or zone defenses, Hubers plans to use screens to get James open.

The Lady Knights have a tough start to the second half of the season. They’re already 0-2 in the NCISAA Tarheel Conference. They travel to Northeast Academy to kick off a four-game road stretch. Following that game is a Jan. 8 contest at top-ranked Ridgecroft and a Jan. 12 rivalry showdown at Pungo. The away stretch ends Jan. 15 at Wayne Country Day in a non-conference matchup.

“It’s kind of tough to come back from Christmas and those are the furthest away games,” Hubers said. “Long travels, but it will be good to get those games out of the way. At the end of the season, we’ll have more home games. Maybe we can buckle down and have a good home stretch.”

Their regular season concludes with a three-game home stand.